{"id":92482,"date":"2025-04-16T20:33:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T03:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=92482"},"modified":"2025-05-01T09:24:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:24:23","slug":"monsters-all-around-amanda-michelle-smiths-battle-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/monsters-all-around-amanda-michelle-smiths-battle-scenes\/","title":{"rendered":"Monsters All Around: Amanda Michelle Smith\u2019s Battle Scenes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist

Amanda Michelle Smith with her dog Emmy\u2014companionship and creative energy folded into the fabric of home and studio life.<\/p><\/div>\n

They are part ceramic, part painting; filled with girls, in fancy dresses, climbing trees and mountains in exotic landscapes; and there are monsters, lots of monsters, threatening or doing battle with the young ladies. In one work, a girl hefts a giant sword to slice open the gut of a beast swallowing her friends. In another, blood spurts out as a young warrior stabs a massive red dragon in the eye. Suggest that these female characters appear strong, however, and Amanda Michelle Smith<\/a> will correct you. \u201cThey\u2019re not strong,” she says. “They\u2019re angry.\u201d<\/h4>\n

So is Smith.<\/h4>\n

In Smith\u2019s studio, on the bottom floor of her split-level home, a freestanding closet is festooned with family photos, political postcards, meme-worthy slogans, and irreverent affirmations of both exhaustion and defiance: One large one reads, \u201cWe\u2019ll be less activist if you be less shit.\u201d Smith sits on a daybed, her dog Emmy in her lap. From time to time she taps her hands or feet somewhat anxiously. Just outside the door, her two children, 14 and 10, are playing video games with a neighbor friend. \u201cI don\u2019t want to leave here,\u201d she says, \u201cbut we might have to.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u201cHere\u201d is Utah, one of the country\u2019s reddest states, and Smith\u2019s politics run deep blue. It\u2019s Provo, home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ largest university, and Smith is \u201cex-mormon.\u201d It\u2019s a place the artist never aimed for, nor expected to end up in. And she has sometimes howled at it\u2014in an Instagram post during the pandemic she wrote, \u201cI need out of this state of wildfire smoke, theocracy, and anti-vax \u2018patriots’\u201d\u2014but she\u2019s made a home here. And now she\u2019s afraid of losing it.<\/h4>\n
\"Studio

Smith\u2019s studio cabinet, a visual manifesto of her artistic values\u2014family, resistance, exhaustion, and humor coexist on every surface.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"

The artist\u2019s materials\u2014strategically chaotic and emotionally rich\u2014offer a glimpse into the mental and material landscape of her creative process.<\/p><\/div>\n

Smith grew up in Rust Belt Ohio, in a working-class, Scots-Irish family. \u201cI remember living in communities where people actually took care of their houses, and then I remember my dad training people from other countries to take his job, and then his plant closed. And I remember the mass evacuation of industry from where I grew up,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd now you go there, and the only industry is drugs.\u201d<\/h4>\n

As a kid, she became fixated on drawing with old green-and-white dot-matrix paper\u2014\u201cit was all I did, all I liked to do\u201d\u2014even though she didn\u2019t think she was any good at it. And she had no plans to become an artist. \u201cNobody in my family ever went to college or grad school before me, and nobody was an artist,\u201d she says.<\/h4>\n

A program in her high school allowed her to attend college classes for free. After graduation, she continued. She initially pursued psychology but took a ceramics elective at Bowling Green State University that changed everything. Taught by John Balistreri, who became a mentor, Smith found herself immersed in the world of clay, even meeting legendary ceramicists like Peter Voulkos. \u201cI was just really smitten,\u201d she recalls, especially after Voulkos, who passed away during a workshop, left behind boxes of underglaze that came Smith’s way. She was hooked. Despite setbacks\u2014including blowing up her entire BFA show in a kiln two days before her exhibition\u2014she remained fiercely committed.<\/h4>\n

Ceramic work plays a central role in her practice, even as in graduate school she turned her experiments in clay into a form of relief painting. Smith embraces the unpredictable nature of the medium. \u201cI feel like every time I try something new with glazes I\u2019m playing roulette,\u201d she admits. \u201cIt\u2019s something I love and hate about ceramics. You might be rewarded, or you might irretrievably ruin something you\u2019ve spent hours working on, and you have very little control over how things actually end up.\u201d For Smith, this process requires \u201ca combination of surrender, detachment, and hope\u2014a weird combination. You\u2019re rolling the dice.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\"<\/p>\n

When Smith was young, her mother joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and raised her girls in the faith. Smith participated, but by the time she was in college, she says she was done. With the theology, with the culture. But when she went to the Bay Area for grad school at San Jose State University, she recognized LDS congregations provide a welcoming community for transplants. While attending the local LDS ward, she received help finding a job and housing. And she met Casey Jex Smith.<\/h4>\n

Casey is a Utah native who studied at Brigham Young University before going to San Francisco Art Institute for his MFA. He is known for his intricate allegorical drawings rooted in fantasy, religious ritual, and role-playing game aesthetics. Art, Amanda says, is Casey\u2019s mistress. But, still, he\u2019s her favorite artist.<\/h4>\n

They married and launched themselves enthusiastically on their professional careers. Both exhibited extensively\u2014in California, where they had grad school connections, as well as in New York, Virginia, Wisconsin, and France. When they began a family, California seemed too expensive, so they moved to Ohio. Casey taught at Bowling Green and then at a private school. But in a wave of layoffs in 2016, he lost his job. A sister-in-law suggested he try an internship at the cloud software company Domo in American Fork. It turned into a full-time position in user experience design and the family moved to Utah.<\/h4>\n

As much as she has bristled at its politics and turned her back on its religious culture, Smith says she is surprised by how much of a home she\u2019s built in Utah. \u201cI actually love it here, because of the people. When we were moving here, people said, \u2018If you’re moving to Utah, don’t go to Provo.\u2019 But the community of artists and ex-Mormons here \u2026 it’s just all kind of\u2014everybody knows each other, it’s tight. Everybody’s so sweet.\u201d As a lesbian friend from the LDS branch Smith grew up in put it: \u201cNothing reminds me of a bunch of lesbians getting together and talking about their trauma as an ex-Mormon community, because you can talk about trauma nobody else knows about.\u201d<\/h4>\n

After moving to Utah, both Smiths continued to make art and to exhibit, even if less frequently than before and often times more outside of Utah than within. Amanda\u2019s first major appearance on the Utah art scene came in 2020, when she exhibited at both the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and the Bountiful Davis Art Center.<\/h4>\n
\"A

Amanda Michelle Smith, “Women’s Lib,” 2019, ceramic and oil paint, 8 x 10 x 1 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rouge: Utah Women\u2019s Voices<\/em><\/a>, curated by Nancy Andruk Olson at BDAC, featured the aforementioned bowel-opener. When she created it in May, 2019, Smith said it was \u201cabout the feminist struggle for equality, survival and basic human rights. It seems timely, considering the monumental steps backward we\u2019ve taken just this week, with state legislators broadly banning abortion access and a woman\u2019s right to make the most intimate and consequential decisions about her own body. It\u2019s such a struggle not to spiral into hopelessness when the news is so heavy these days.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Speaking of heavy news: 2020 was meant to be a time of promise for Smith, her reemergence as an artist. That fall, both her children would be in school full-time and she had plans for hours in the studio. Then came the pandemic. The children were home all day and Casey set up an office in the home. \u201c And it felt like a double insult,\u201d she says. “The year before, 2019, both kids were diagnosed with autism. We got them diagnosed, and then a pandemic hit. So, I got knocked down, got back up, knocked down, got back up, and then I got knocked down and couldn’t get back up. And that’s when I quit making work for a while.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Lots of artists with children feel conflicted, torn between their artistic drive (which can veer off a cliff into obsession) and their duty to their children. Compound that struggle with children who need more attention than most and you find the available hours become squeezed until there are only minutes left, and those often in the wee hours. \u201cFor Casey and I to do anything, to have a show or to make art, we have to lose sleep. We have to do it in 15 minute increments between requests\u2014we have to fill up all the pill containers; we have to drive to Salt Lake for therapy \u2026 So in the end, it’s like, Okay, I’m [making art] strictly because I have to. Because my brain says that I have to do this.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"A

Smith blends LDS symbolism with Persian manuscript influences, capturing a robed figure on the threshold of disillusionment.<\/p><\/div>\n

Smith is “back up,” with a solo exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. There are fewer monsters in Trust Issues<\/em> but Smith is still wrestling with demons.<\/h4>\n

Smith isn\u2019t always sure if her meaning comes through clearly, but the emotional charge of her symbols\u2014both sacred and unsettling\u2014infuses her work with a deeply personal reckoning. In one piece, there are no monsters, just a robed and veiled figure who approaches structure with a veiled entrance. It\u2019s similar to many of her settings, which are often influenced by Persian and Mughal manuscript paintings. Those familiar with the Utah landscape will recognize the Salt Lake City temple, and those familiar with the LDS religion, the figure dressed in LDS temple clothes holding a Liahona, the symbolic compass from the Book of Mormon. Smith says it\u2019s a work about disillusionment. \u201cYou are promised this exaltation,\u201d she says of temple ceremonies and LDS theology. \u201cYou are promised that if you are endowed and you do all the things that you need to do, and you are worthy of personal revelation you are promised with bigger things. But once you get in that bigger door, it just leads to these very tiny lives, very provincial little villages where you’re like, ‘Oh, I never wanted to be here.’\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"A

This work in Amanda Smith’s “Trust Issues” alludes to both personal trauma and a broader sense of spiritual coercion.<\/p><\/div>\n

Another painting references her patriarchal blessing, a sacred ordinance that happens once in a Latter-day Saint\u2019s life, usually in their late teen years. She describes it as something that felt like it \u201ctied [her] feet,\u201d limiting her ability to become her authentic self. She says of the ceremony, \u201cPeople who are imbued with this priesthood\u201d\u2014referring to the adult male member of the church who pronounces the blessing and makes promises for the recipient\u2019s future\u2014\u201c\u2026 They already know<\/em>.\u201d That sense of imposed divine authority overshadowed her own self-knowledge. Her imagery channels this experience into visual metaphor\u2014”like this creepy thing coming out of a dead tree\u2026to fuck up your life.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Some of the few monsters to appear in this body of work are the gremlins who hops across a pink sea monster to storm a fortress made of pills holding one of Smith\u2019s ubiquitous heroines. \u201cI don\u2019t think of myself as a typical mom who has it together and gets up and puts jeans and a sweater on and drinks a cup of coffee and gets their kids off to school,\u201d Smith says. \u201cI am a hot mess every day, all day, and so this piece, it’s not being critical at all of pharmaceuticals. It\u2019s, like, I couldn’t live without them. But no matter how many pills you take\u2014or if your dog is with you and you have a comfort animal (like my dog is with me), or you have a cup of coffee, and you’re in your safe place\u2014It’s all still coming for you. There’s nothing that can keep it out.\u201d<\/h4>\n

It should be mentioned: the monsters in Smith’s relief paintings are not particularly terrifying. They\u2019re not meant to be. They\u2019re intentionally campy, funny, even cute. \u201cHorror is my favorite,\u201d she says, but not because it scares her. In fact, she doesn\u2019t believe horror\u2014whether in film or art\u2014can genuinely frighten. \u201cThe only thing that really scares the shit out of me is other humans.\u201d Her monsters are more in the spirit of medieval bestiaries, with their strange, often laughable interpretations of animals: \u201cYou\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my God, that\u2019s what they thought a giraffe looked like.\u2019\u201d Despite their whimsy, monsters still serve a purpose in her work\u2014as stand-ins for threat or fear. \u201cIt\u2019s the only way I know how to convey a threat\u2026 it\u2019s a joke monster, but it\u2019s still a monster.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"A

Detail from Amanda Michelle Smith’s “Pharma Fortress.”<\/p><\/div>\n

New monsters keep invading Smith\u2019s life: Just as she\u2019s managed to get back to her art career, to balance it with her role as a mother; just as she\u2019s found a welcome home with a group of like-minded friends, she fears a new political climate might drive her out of Utah.<\/h4>\n

\u201cI’m very scared about the Department of Education, because I know for a fact, if they throw that back to the states, we will not have it\u201d\u2014\u201cit\u201d being the support necessary to raise her children, whether it\u2019s the Individualized Education Program (IEP) that outlines a plan for a student with a disability to receive special education, or the long-term services her children will need throughout their adult life. Smith describes the state\u2019s Social Security Disability Insurance system as \u201cabysmal,\u201d citing a social worker who admitted that even severely in-need individuals are routinely denied or left waiting for decades. \u201cYou won\u2019t see a dime while your kid is a child,\u201d the worker told her, noting that during the entire COVID pandemic, no applications were processed due to diverted funds. \u201cLike this place is the most like Darwinian place I\u2019ve ever lived,\u201d Smith says.<\/h4>\n

She also worries about a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, where people deemed \u201cundesirable\u201d or lacking soft skills may be viewed as disposable. \u201cCasey and I can hold our own\u2026 but our kids can\u2019t,\u201d she says. Her fear and her anger isn\u2019t abstract; it\u2019s rooted in the very real uncertainty of whether her children will be able to survive and thrive in a world that seems ever more hostile to difference. \u201cThe hardest part about having kids is the amount you love them,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause – especially if you have kids with any kind of need, you don\u2019t get to watch them move through life, meeting these milestones\u2014like have really close friendships, all that \u2014you get to watch them suffer, and it\u2019s like torture. So, to us, it\u2019s not about not loving our kids. It\u2019s about it\u2019s hard to have kids because<\/em> you love them.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"Framed

Studio wall with Amanda Smith\u2019s framed works, photos of her two children, and playful paper umbrella mobile\u2014where personal narrative and visual storytelling intertwine.<\/p><\/div>\n

Smith finds herself trapped in a painful contradiction\u2014Utah is a place where she\u2019s built a community and found things to love, but for her kids\u2019 sake, she may have to leave. \u201cYou know, with every parent, it’s like your interest against theirs \u2026 and I will pick them every time. But at the same time, I’m sad about it.\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u201cSo when you ask if I see myself here in the future, I don’t know,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I doubt it\u2026I am, like, in a state of constant grief and terror, and there are monsters all around.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Trust Issues<\/em>, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through May 3.<\/p>\n

All images courtesy of the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They are part ceramic, part painting; filled with girls, in fancy dresses, climbing trees and mountains in exotic landscapes; and there are monsters, lots of monsters, threatening or doing battle with the young ladies. In one work, a girl hefts a giant sword to slice open the gut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[3351],"class_list":["post-92482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-amanda-michelle-smith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_8894.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 14:24:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92482"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92539,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92482\/revisions\/92539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}